Sometimes a deadline can really kill you!

The term deadline originated from the American Civil War. In the infamous POW camp at Andersonville, GA there were no real fences early on. Instead there was a line drawn in the red clay. Any prisoner who approached it would be shot dead without warning. So for those who find deadlines impossible remember that in times past, they were quite literally lethal.

I am thinking of deadlines and their nature today due to the recent flap over the Obama administration's handling of the Sherry Sherrod case. For those who don't recall her case or haven't heard of it, Ms. Sherrod is the U.S. Department of Agriculture employee forced to resign for supposedly acting in a biased fashion towards a department client some 25 years ago. There was a leaked video in which Ms. Sherrod claims she found this main to be racist and condescending towards her so she chose not to give him less than full service. Upon seeing this on Fox News the Obama administration forced her to resign.

Well the real story is coming together now and we are seeing that what was shown was actually a heavily edited video from a conservative blogger trying to not only push his own agenda but to demonstrate the Obama administration was racist. The unedited video shows Ms. Sherrod saying how she over came her feelings of anger towards this man and helped him out. In fact, she did such a good job that the man himself went to the media and called her an angel.

I find this a very interesting story for several reasons. First, it shows the absolute worst aspect of the rush-rush 24 hour news cycle. Run with the story, without first getting facts checked. Second, it serves as a warning to any and all communications people that news can not be spun or managed. The best spin is always and will always be the truth. Granted it takes longer to take the truth, but I am guessing that this mistake by the administration is not what they had planned to deal with this week.

This story also shows a break down by the communications people who failed to protect their product and in effect were made to look foolish. They acted out of fear and were in a purely defensive mode. No attempt seems to be made to check on the veracity of the story and prepare a rebuttal of it. In many respects, senior management has decided that communications people exist to answer the phones from reporters and book interviews. Sadly, this incident serves to reinforce that argument.

Lastly, we have yet another example of communication people rolling over and doing what ever management wants regardless of the implications. At some point, we need to gather together and say no that is not the right way to do things and let the CEO's or department heads or whomever know they need to trust our judgment in matters regarding communication. Sadly, too many of our brothers and sisters out there seem to think we are like that cute puppy dog who is always willing to please so I am not holding out hopes a united front will appear anytime soon.

We are the front line troops in brand protection and message development. We need to say what needs to be said, even if it is unpopular. We also need to make sure that any media opportunity is just that, an opportunity. It is better to let an artificial deadline slip and be accurate than rush to judgment and make a bonehead move. Tripping the deadline can get you killed.

Don't Blame the Weatherman Because it Rained on Your Parade

I remember the late great George Carlin had a great bit on corporate success and failure. I don't recall the exact words but it was along the lines of, "Do you ever notice that we succeed and you fail?" As we all know success is the child of many parents and failure is an orphan. I think this was on perfect display at the press conference held by Steve Jobs on Friday. I would call this part press conference, part explanation, part near child-like tantrum.

Steve Jobs is well known for having a large ego and a short fuse. In that respect he is like a number of CEO's. He, and Apple of course though it's getting harder to separate the two, have been on a tremendous hot streak. Between the iPod, iPhone and iPad he has been raised to a level few non-deities ever see. Unfortunately, like a lot of diva's, the start to believe their own press clippings and really do believe that they are just an amazing and completely important person.

He made an astonishing mistake in my opinion by laying blame for this not at his own feet, nor his engineers but at everyone outside of Apple especially the media. We heard that this problem was well known within the industry and other carriers had the same problems and no one commented on them. Then he ripped into the news media for what he determined was taking a minor flaw and blowing it out of proportion. As we clearly can see, Jobs is totally tone deaf to keep his customers happy and in the long run that can't be good for Apple the organization.

In a great many respects Steve Jobs is certainly a genius. In others he is a dinosaur whose extinction time may fast be approaching. We saw that he has no interest in working with the media and that he will settle for nothing less than fawning coverage of himself, his company and his products. We also saw his ugly side when, for once, he wasn't calling the shots and showing everyone how great his products were. This is not someone who likes criticism and thinks he can control what is being said about his company without the benefit of mutually beneficial media relations. I watched him on stage and said "thank God I am not in his PR department."

In some respects he is like a lot of CEO types I have met down the line. I always remember one CEO who was interviewing me to head his PR operation. He told me before asking any questions that reporters only want creative stories so how would I pitch his company. I told him, very politely of course, that I disagreed and that the media wants to write for their audiences. I further explained that a PR strategy should target outlets his customers were likely to be influenced. I had to hold back my eyes from rolling when he looked at me and said, "reporters and customers put together don't equal half an idiot."

Needless to say I decided then to not take the job but I did enjoy the chance to try and tell a CEO how wrong he was. Of course there was no changing his mind and I could tell how furious he was that anyone dared question him. So in typical imperious fashion he cut the interview short and they hired someone within the company who wouldn't make any waves.

The lessons learned from all of this is that no company is solely about the CEO no matter how brilliant he or she is. A strategy revolving around that will eventually lead to the organizations failure. Also, it is terrible communications practice to blame the media for your own short comings. Yes the media loves to kick someone when they are down but, often, most wounds are self inflicted. Lastly, as communications people, we are responsible for protecting the company's brand and reputation and that is much more valuable that any CEO and his or her ego.

The loss of communications, in communications

I was working on a project recently with a colleague and was shocked at some of the writing I was seeing going on. While we all understand and appreciate the need to be proficient in all of the social media aspects that are growing rapidly it is amazing how the long term impacts of these changes in our profession is that we are all becoming weaker. Just as the fast food culture tends to lead to obesity, the style of social media writing leads to weaker writing and communication skills throughout the organization.

Where as in the past communications professional generally learned to write from the same base, be it AP Style or what ever, most communications professionals wrote in the same style and learned to write the same way. This was then shared with new entries into the field and while one could argue about the merits of the AP style, there was a certain standardization which led to a level of professionalism.

Now with the influx of social media into the mix, writing skills have declined sharply and we may be facing a long term crisis in communications. For one thing, the art and skill of crafting a story and turning that into a message is eroding faster than an ocean facing beach. One of the downside of stressing Twitter over traditional writing is that we are telling snippets and not delivering messages. A brief character blurb is often not enough to tell a complete story.

Also, as we all know, proper grammar is simply not being taught. I am thinking of asking for future writing and editing assignments to offer me bonuses on the edits I make. If I were to get a dollar for every split infinitive, missing comma or my own personal favorite the propositional adverb, I could be making something in the low seven figures. I would add to this the over reliance on spell check and the lack of a dictionary in offices. Recently I had to show someone how to look something up in a dictionary and was astounded that they didn't know how to use it.

The other area of failure in communications arises from the managers in both agencies and in the corporate world. More often than not, edits to a document are simply marked and e-mailed back. There are no interactions between manager and employee and no understanding is shared in all too many cases. More often than not the document is hacked to death to make it seem to fit the managers view of the message and not only is no lesson learned, but the message is weakened because the staff member will not wish to challenge the boss.

While I am not going to say social media lacks importance and its role should be lessened, I do believe we need to strengthen the training of staff and managers in how to work to craft stronger messages. This means training, time commitment and the desire to make a uniform commitment to excellence. These are areas where, sadly, we as communications professional are lacking and can improve both easily and quickly.

How Communications Can be a Value Add to the Corporate Mix

A common refrain from people in marketing and corporate communications is that we are indispensable when times are good but completely disposable when the fickle winds of the business world change. A part of that negative aspect of our role is the fault of short sighted corporate executives who can only see to the next quarter and lack the vision to build their brands. But we are kidding ourselves as a profession if we think that the fault is in everyone but ourselves. Crying like some grumpy child who believes the world just doesn't get them.

Having the experience of having worked in both the corporate and agency side of marketing and corp comm there is one thing that stands out right away. By and large we take the easiest way out and go down the path of least resistance. There is an old story about an older scientist and his young protege conducting an experiment. At some point, the older scientist turns in amazement to the protege and says, "what did you think of that?" The protegee has no idea what he is talking about so he says "hmm,,,what did you think of it." After the older scientist gives a long winded answer about what a profound discovery he's just made the younger apprentice says with a smile, "yes, I saw it too; we're going to be famous."

The point of the story is that we all too often try and give a client what they want rather than what they need. We want to please when we are really supposed to instruct. Would you feel comfortable with a doctor who seemed dodgy and wanted to know if you wanted surgery or tests? Expertise is something we pay for and it is something that we earn. However it is something we very rarely practice out of fear of stepping on someone's toes.

So many people in communications value the fact that we have the ear of the CEO. But in many cases the CEO is like Cesar of old who claimed he makes the sun rise in the east and set in the west. Cesar could do it the other way he once claimed but the roosters would all die of fright. Well the CEO is not the organization and any half way well run organization has a plan to succeed the CEO so that is another blow to the idea of the CEO as a deity.

So back to the question at hand, what can communications add to the corporate mix? First and foremost we should be the truth tellers in the organization. One term I have used to executives time and time again is that, if you lie, you die. This doesn't necessarily involve some grand conspiracy of competitors out to get you; instead it involves building mutually beneficial and open relationships with key stakeholders. The reason they need be mutually beneficial is that there will be a time when the organization will need the help of a stakeholder or maybe even multiple stakeholders. It's best to have them think kind of you before you ask for help than having to go, hat in hand to someone who is lukewarm in how they view.

The other way that communications can be of value to the overall success of the organization is by being a fair and just counsel. While that may seem obvious, it is very rarely practiced. Too many communications people seem to think that their job is to follow orders without question. If I had a dime for how many times I have been told, well, so and so pays the bills so we do what they say, I could retire now. This is the wrong type of mentality that I am talking about. The fact that we are being payed for our expertise is proof we need to offer opinions which may fly in the face of what the client wishes to be told. It's business, not a nursery school!

Telling someone they are wrong is neither easy, nor pleasant but it is often times necessary. If an organization has any hope of success it will be run by people who realize they do not know everything and who trust those beneath them. Sadly, as we all know, most organizations don't function this way. The best course of action is to fight hard for your view and when it is rebuffed, make it clear that this is happening against your counsel.

The long and short is that corporate communications can add a tremendous value to the corporate mix if we, as corp comm professionals, are willing to be brave enough and bold enough to take a stand. There will always be the shallow careerists who think that by kissing up to the client they will be rewarded. But by and large they damage us and damage the profession. We should try and avoid them. We should offer the value of our expertise and experience and let it be known our views are as correct as those of a doctor or a lawyer. You are welcome to ignore them but you do so at your own peril. After a few experiences being burned by poor judgment, perhaps the decision makers will realize we actually know what we're doing!

Where is the leadership in Public Relations

A friend sent me an interesting article showing that a Chief Petty Officer in the Coast Guard who was responsible for crafting the government's message about the BP spill also worked for BP's PR agency. While the article was unclear regarding the exact role of this person and if they worked on the BP account it did raise some distributing questions about the roles of public relations, ethics and leadership.

One issue PR people deal with is the concept that we are nothing but spin masters. Basically, many people both outside and, quite sadly, inside the organization, think it is our job to take manure and turn it into lovely fertilizer. The sad fact of the matter is that the PR profession and many of its leaders are the greatest factors in ensuring this is not simply a stereotype, but, sadly the state of affairs in PR.

Going back to the case of the Chief Petty Officer I was reminded of an ethics question posed to both doctors and lawyers in law and medical school respectively. They are basically told that if they need to ask themselves, "is this ethical?" comes up, then it is most likely unethical, or at best a gray area and they should avoid it. While lawyers are hardly seen as the paragons of ethics and doctors can be compromised, the fact is they have a set of rules in their professions which say what is and what isn't wrong.

What's also missing in PR that is found in both professions (legal and medical) is that young professionals entering the field are thrown into the field where they are required to make decisions, act professionally and deliver results. In this respect, PR is quite similar, where we diverge is that the doctor or lawyer is also given the benefit of constant feedback; good, bad or otherwise.

Sadly, in public relations, and marketing too, we see virtually no mentoring like what is seen in most professions. Rather we see an assumption that the person who has been hired at an entry level knows what they are doing and it is up to them to do it right. There is also what I would call a twisted sense among senior levels that this is how they learned it and if you can't swim you shouldn't be in the pool.

This all circles back to the issue about the Coast Guard CPO and BP. No one in an agency setting I have seen conducts anything even approaching real training for their staff. Very few people give honest and educational feedback to a junior PR person so they may learn. Senior PR people do love to bring junior people on the carpet and dress them down and self serving lectures are all a part of office politics but genuine and true leadership that challenges PR people to be critical thinkers and to engage in dialogue is very rare indeed.

I do wish to be clear this is not simply an agency problem. In some respects, the corporate PR world has a greater leadership gap than agencies. For one thing, they are usually held responsible for stroking the ego of a CEO or some other senior executive and telling them what they wish to hear and not the truth. Corporate PR tends to be about turf and privileges and not about doing the best job possible. It does mirror agency life in that junior people are expected to not make any mistakes but, at the same time, avoid asking any questions, even if they may learn from it.

The sad fact of PR is that there is a vacuum of leadership in the PR industry. Yes, that's a broad brush statement and I know personally there are very good leaders in public relations today. But compared to other professions we lack leaders who are willing to be mentors, teachers and to lay down a series of rules that will help define us as a profession. Would you trust a lawyer who wasn't a member of the bar? Would you trust a doctor whose license to practice has been revoked? Then why do we trust PR people who owe their positions to being able to survive the various business cycles. Remember the old story about what survives a nuclear war? Cockroaches and Twinkies? Well PR deserves to have its leadership be true leaders and not just cockroaches and Twinkies.

The Crisis in Crisis Communications

I have noticed lately that companies seem to be more interested in hiring PR and corp. comm people with experience in crisis communication. It seems odd because I can speak both as one who has experience in both handling a crisis and writing a crisis plan that corporations want nothing to do with crisis planning. The intent does seem to be there but the desire to actually execute a plan and then have a meeting to discuss roles and responsibilities is non-existent.

As I mentioned I have written the plans and I have noticed that once the plan is written the final aspect of the plan, regarding regular meetings to discuss its execution never takes place. I am reminded of the scene in the movie "Airplane" where the sign to the passengers is saying, "Don't Panic," and then gets overloaded, burns out and says, "Okay, Panic." Needless to say bedlam ensues.

This is exactly what happens in most organizations when it comes time to actually deal with a crisis. The road way is littered with the corpses of organizations who have dealt badly with crisis and their lack of a working, and drilled upon, crises plan becomes obvious. BP is the latest proof of this and I can think of several more if not by name then by the fact that their crisis over came the spin that the organization was trying to maintain and eventually buried them. Think of all the bacteria outbreaks in various food service companies or lead in toys as a prime example of this.

The goal of a crisis communications program is not to protect the CEO from looking bad, nor is it really to protect the company from law suits. If you sneeze wrong in this litigious age you get sued. It is to protect the organization's relationship with all its markets, it is to protect the brand and most important it is to protect the company five years from now.

Sadly another factor that hampers crisis communications in this day and age is that organizations think quarter to quarter and rarely think as far in advance as they should. Therefore in many cases crisis communications is seen as something reactive and not proactive. It is that prize rose bush you only water because it looks like it's wilting in the sun.

One example of crisis communication done well was the recent incident involving McDonald's and the promotional glasses from the Shrek movie that had lead in them. This could have been a very serious issue for McDonald's as they could have been accused of endangering children, something many interest groups believe they do with the food the sell. Once the story broke, McDonald's jumped on it, announced they would accept a return of all glasses and issued a prompt apology. I am sure that a few gift cards or free Happy Meals went out too.

The point here is that McDonald's was ready for an incident, any incident, so when something happened, they were quick to act on it and limit the scope. They also controlled what was said by spokespeople and they provided both a resolution to the danger and had people on message and seemed to show genuine concern for their target market. I have checked and as of now I can't see any class action law suits against them. If only BP had been so upfront.

So as PR and corp comm people it isn't good enough to have a crisis plan or say we have experience in crisis communication. Like any good athlete we need to stay in shape and we do this by reviews and planning for ideally an event that will never come. Corporate types may not wish to participate but of course you can always tell them don't worry, when the storm hits, you wish you had!

Why does anyone ever see the business potential for PR?

One thing that I often harp about is how agency's make this type of mistake or corporations make t his other type of mistake. This is true! However I have discovered, what I believe is one strong commonality between the two and what is ironic is how similar it is, yet how completely different it is at the same time. Neither businesses, nor agencies, fully grasp and understand the powerful role that a good public relations program can play in growing the organization.

Let me start with corporations since I have more first hand knowledge of how they run. Let's be honest CEO's and other senior executives do love PR to a degree. They love to use PR as an ego tool to make themselves look good and show the world how smart they are. To most CEO's, especially at publicly traded companies, unless they are being quoted extensively by the CNBC's and Wall Street Journal's of the world than PR is not doing its job. Of course, who among us hasn't been told to think up a "press release" because the stock price is under pressure and we need to do something about that.

I should also mention PR agencies who by and large have no clue about the full business potential of PR. Some of the advice I have received, and seen, from agencies is similar to when my dental hygienist tells me I need to floss better because my soft tissues bleed when punctured by sharp metal objects. There is a part of me that says well that's obviously canned, prepared and something everyone hears. By and large agencies are only interested in the hit. Just like the CEO who wants to be on CNBC or in the Journal, the agency wants to place them there because when they go out to recruit new clients they want to show how they have delivered hits in big name, well known publications.

Sadly, not all companies are Apple, Coke or Starbucks who have these well known brands that are bound to generate copy in well known consumer oriented publications. Most companies are in very esoteric markets and need to be in front of publications that are read by key decision makers in that field. If for example, you have found a new way to turn the remains of corn husks into cattle or pig feed than you are not going to get a call back from the Journal but farming industry publications, read by decision makers at Monsanto or ADM, would probably be very interested in what you have to say. Sexy publications, probably not, but they will drive sales!

That's what it all comes down to at the end of the day. Public relations exists as a tool to drive sales. Its goal, among other things, is to raise awareness and then raise interest so that when the sales team comes calling they are a known quantity whose value proposition is well understood. This is not to denigrate such vital PR functions as crisis communications but these other functions of PR will not happen if no one has heard of you! The business potential for PR is huge and it should be seen as the match that lights the fuse which is marketing. It does not exist to boost egos or land trophies.

One other thing I would add is lets keep in mind that this is often unglamorous but necessarily so. I have surprised people by comparing PR to a heart transplant. They are messy, require lots of planning, lots of help, excruciating commitments of time and resources and mind numbing attention to detail. But when done properly, they can bring life to an organization.

Agencies please do your client a favor and let them know how you can help them grow their business, develop a brand and gain market leadership through the art and science of communications. Corporations, please see PR and communication as a tool every bit as important as that MBA in helping you grow your organization. Remember a smile and hand extended in aid results in a positive response.